Culinary Nutrition – trending topic in education

Many teachers, food writers, chefs and health promoters have spent much of their working lives promoting healthy eating. A lot of these hard working and dedicated people have had a huge impact on people’s/families’ lives.

They have been translating nutrients [science] into food we eat by writing about and teaching cooking skills. These food professionals have been ahead of the game, as we are now seeing recognition of culinary nutrition as an important area of our countries’ wellbeing.

Food should be delicious, good for us and the environment, and let’s not forget that it should be on a safe food pathway – safely grown, stored, prepared, served and cleaned up.

‘Culinary nutrition involves taking a great passion for food and cooking, putting the deliciousness back into nutrition and leading with a food first philosophy. Sourcing sustainable ingredients and understanding supply chains, planning balanced plant-rich meals and menus, developing recipes to use the best available seasonal ingredients, and avoiding food waste are valuable in moving us toward environmentally sustainable eating habits’ says Dietitian, Emma Stirling.

Culinary nutrition is the merging of nutrition and food science with cooking skills to create nutritious and fulfilling meals to suit individuals and families. People need to be educated about food nutrition and what they are putting into their bodies. It is important to education about different dietary requirements; e.g. a person with diabetes needs a different diet to a person with food allergies.

Chefs want to understand what ‘healthy’ means and how to market it, so they look to dietitians, nutritionists, educators and other outside sources for practical nutrition information. When they include culinary nutrition in their menus, they help create healthy eating behaviours for customers, especially those who eat away from home on a regular basis.

This is a new, on-trend subject, so carefully check the credentials of any organisation offering online qualifications.

To download the poster go to the poster page in the Downloads section here.

References and further reading:

Safefood.nz;  dietitianconnection.com/;  ecpi.edu/blog/what-is-culinary-nutrition;  culinarynutrition.com/;  scoopnutrition.com; sciencedirect.com/book/9780123918826/culinary-nutrition